On pandemics being productive

How can and do pandemic events become productive for everyday human experiences of death and dying? This social thought and commentary piece’s central argument examines the productive potential of pandemics, specifically COVID-19, by focusing on the early impact of the coronavirus in 2020 and its longer-term ripple effects. By grounding this personal essay in these early reflections on an extremely intense period of both personal and global chaos, it is possible to begin discussing what future historians, anthropologists, and academics in related fields might glimpse when looking backward. It is also important to begin understanding how future pandemic response plans will emerge, building on the failures of 2020, in order to manage yet unknown global pandemics. One key takeaway for this planning work is to avoid defaulting into the essay’s core theoretical point, a concept I call virological determinism, where societal inequalities amplifying pandemic related effects are entirely blamed on a virus and not the underlying social conditions caused by government negligence. By reflecting on the productive possibilities created by pandemics, it is also then possible to begin understanding how many more people died during the early years of COVID-19 then ever needed to.